A desperate plea for a Texas sports icon who deserves their Hall of Fame moment
Please.
The prettiest of pleases.
At this point, begging may be in order.
She would never do it, so someone needs to do it for Leta Andrews.
The woman has more victories in basketball than any coach alive in the United States, and yet her earned spot in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame remains maddeningly elusive.
On Friday, during the NBA’s All-Star weekend in Indianapolis, Coach Andrews will find out if she is a finalist to be included in the Class of 2024 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
If she does not get in now something is terribly wrong with a process that needs help.
She has been down this path so many times everyone who knows her lost count. But everyone who knows her hopes that maybe this time it will finally work in her favor.
Coach Andrews is 86, and these things need to happen now so everyone involved can enjoy a moment in Springfield, Mass. she more than earned.
The woman coached girls basketball for 52 years, mostly at Granbury High School. When she retired from the game, she left with 1,416 career victories; that’s the highest total in the sport on any level.
More than Coach K. More than Pop. More than the late Pat Summitt. More than Jody Conradt. More than former Dunbar boys coach Robert Hughes, who is in the Hall of Fame.
She didn’t leave the game in a better place than where she found it; people like Leta made basketball possible for girls. Leta was coaching basketball to girls before President Richard Nixon made Title IX a reality.
The amount of disdain, garbage, sexism and utter apathy that women like Leta had to deal with when they started coaching basketball for girls decades ago would have translated to 50 lawsuits a day in this era.
If Leta’s record and 67-mile-long list of achievements don’t make it to Springfield, the good people who celebrate, and sell, that Hall of Fame need re-think their mission. This Hall of Fame honors all contributors to basketball, not just the NBA. Men. Women. High school. College. Pros. International.
Dr. James Naismith invented basketball down the street from the current location of the Hall so kids would have something to do inside during a brutal winter, other than beat each other up. How the game evolved to include women benefits society the world over.
Iowa guard Caitlin Clark and LSU forward Angel Reese are where they are, in part, because of women like Leta.
The game of basketball wins with Sabrina Ionescu going head-to-head in a 3-point contest with Stephen Curry this weekend at the All-Star party in Indy.
The game of basketball wins with Kim Mulkey’s crazy outfits, and Nebraska selling out home games. The game of basketball wins with Becky Hammon coaching either the San Antonio Spurs, or Las Vegas Aces.
Don’t ask about the voting process with the Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s more secretive than the Vatican’s procedures for selecting their next Pope. It’s more difficult to grasp than x² + k² = 0 with solution x = k i.
For this class, the Hall announced that it changed its election process to “more carefully examine candidates from the International, Men’s Veteran’s, Women’s Veteran’s, and Contributor Committees.”
That should not impact Andrews’ making it as a finalist.
The list of nominees for this class is so long it can barely be contained by the Internet. Many of these people are nominees only because they’ve met the necessary amount of time as a retired player, like former Mavericks forward Shawn Marion.
The one person who isn’t really worrying about it is Andrews.
Even at 86, Andrews is active within Granbury. She eats out often, serves meals to the First Responders once a month, and tends to her chickens.
She has lived long enough to experience loss, including the death of her husband, to know losing out on a Hall of Fame bid is disappointing, but not tragic.
Would she like to be included in this Hall of Fame class? Of course. Her family, friends, and long list of players are hoping that this time it will be different.
They are like the rest of us who ask how can you have a Basketball Hall of Fame and not include the basketball coach who won more basketball games than any other?
